


Advent: Year

by FyrMaiden



Series: Klaine Advent 2014 [21]
Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Klaine Advent 2014 Prompt: Year</p>
<p>Unbridled fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent: Year

**May**

Kurt comes home from shopping with a picture on his phone. He talks around it for an hour, and then caves in and shoves it under Blaine’s nose. Blaine squints and then takes the phone from him, holds it away from his face.

“A dog?” he says, his eyes lighting up. Kurt nods enthusiastically.

“Soon?” he says. “She’s not ready to be adopted yet. But I’ve asked them to reserve her for us?”

Blaine grins and stares at the picture again. A dog. He feels his nose scrunch and he strokes his finger over her face as if he can feel her already. They’re going to get a dog!

*

**June**

They pick her up from the shelter, Blaine holding her against him and staring at her face as Kurt finalises the paperwork. She’s a small mix, black and white with a barrel for a body. She’s excited and excitable, her tail thumping against Blaine’s chest as he coos at her. When he looks up, both Kurt and the receptionist are watching him and he grins at both of them, wide and infectious.

“Happy?” Kurt asks, and Blaine nods without hesitation. Kurt opens the crate they brought with them, complete with soft blanket and pad. Blaine stares at it and strokes her head.

“Blaine,” Kurt says. Blaine sighs, and transfers the puppy into the box. Kurt closes it with a snap of the latch. Blaine bends down to look at her through the door, and she stares back, looks abandoned and sad, and Blaine straighten slowly.

“She’ll be fine, Blaine,” Kurt says, and kisses his cheek softly. “You can’t carry her all the way home.”

Blaine’s sure he could, but whether he should or not is, he’ll admit, open to debate.

Still, when they let her out in their apartment, she is inquisitive and happy. She slips on the shiny floor, her floppy paws skidding underneath her as she tries to follow Blaine into the kitchen, and Kurt watches them both from the doorway as he follows. He thinks she has the waggliest tail of any dog he’s ever come across, her whole body moving with the force of it as she stares up at Blaine.

If there’s one thing that’s ultimately true, it’s how much he knows he loves her already. When Blaine looks at him and grins that same grin that he’s loved since he was 16, he feels his heart expand again.

*

**July**

Kurt says, apropos of nothing except watching their still vaguely nameless puppy gamble around the legs of the kitchen chairs, that she needs her shots. He wants to take her out, let her expend some of the energy she has. Blaine picks her up and turns her to face Kurt, waves her paws at him.

“I think I need a name first,” he says, putting on a voice for Kurt’s benefit. She turns her head and licks his nose, and he laughs before depositing her back on the floor. Kurt rolls his eyes and toys with the handle of his mug.

“Bright ideas?” he says. Blaine takes a bite of his toast and then feeds the crust to the dog, who seems to almost swallow it whole. “Blaine, she’ll choke. Stop it. What do you want to call her? We can’t keep calling her Tiny, or Scuttler. She needs an actual name that I can relay to other actual humans without blaming our non-existent children for it.”

Blaine grins and stares at her for a long minute. “How about Artemis?” Her tail thumps on the floor, and Blaine grins and looks at Kurt. “She likes it,” he says.

Kurt sighs and drinks his coffee. “In lieu of other options,” he says. Blaine would concern himself, but the dog clambers up his leg and Kurt’s eyes are sparkling.

Artemis it is.

*

**August**

For the first time since they brought her home, they make plans to go out for the evening. Kurt dusts off his favourite suit, and Blaine wears a bowtie that hasn’t seen daylight since February. Kurt catches his lip between his teeth and brushes imaginary lint from Blaine’s broad shoulder. “You’re beautiful,” he says, softly, and leans in to steal a kiss from Blaine’s willing mouth.

On their way out, they make sure that all of their doors are closed. Artemis has free run of the main living area, but when they leave, she is curled up asleep on the sofa. Kurt had made a cursory effort to keep her off of the furniture, but has given up in favour of a collection of colour co-ordinated throws instead. Kurt tells Blaine not to wake her, and they slip out quietly, closing the door behind them with a soft click. They enjoy their meal, and walk home slowly, arm in arm.

When they open the door, they are assaulted by a small flurry of fur. Blaine bends down and picks her up, and she cries and washes his face with her tongue. He smoothes her ears and tells her it’s okay, it’s fine. Kurt tells him he should put her down, that he’s reinforcing her worrying by telling her it’s okay. Blaine complies, and she sits on the floor and stares at both of them until it’s Kurt that caves in and picks her up.

In the kitchen, they discover that she’s had an accident. Blaine cleans it up, and neither of them can bring themselves to correct her. She’s a baby, and she was locked in. Accidents happen.

When they finally head to bed, neither of them can bear the sound her scratching at the door any longer, so they let her.

She sleeps on the end of the bed, and doesn’t move until morning.

*

**September**

When Kurt comes home, one of his slippers is sitting on the kitchen table. Or, more accurately, it used to be one of his slippers. It is now a former slipper, the heel chewed out and the sole a ragged mess of rubber. Blaine appears behind him, says, “I’ve told her off.”

Kurt lowers his bag to the table and picks the slipper up, turns it over in his hands and frowns. “It’s old anyway,” he says. He throws it in the trash and turns to face Blaine, who looks worried. “It doesn’t matter. I can replace a pair of slippers.”

Blaine forces a smile and nods his head. “I know. I’m sorry, Kurt.”

“You didn’t eat my slippers,” Kurt says. He beckons Blaine closer and wraps his arms around him, holds him tight until Blaine hugs him back and then kisses his cheek. “The dog can stay. Don’t worry.”

Blaine chokes a laugh and steps back. “I figured we could get Chinese food tonight,” he says. “I really want spring rolls.”

He changes his attitude when she chews through one of his designer boots, though. He finds it under the bed, the matching one on his other foot. The leather is ragged and frayed, and he yells for Blaine at the top of his lungs, waves it at Blaine when he sees him in the doorway. Blaine goes pale.

“I’m going to roast her if I see her, Blaine,” Kurt says, slinging the boot away from him. He plants himself rigidly on the end of the bed, tugs the zip of the ones he’s wearing down. Once off, he hurls it into the corner with the other one. Blaine swallows hard. Kurt lifts his head and glares at him. “Well?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to express some kind of reaction, that’d be a start.”

“She’s a dog, she doesn’t understand how much your shoes cost.”

“I want her gone.”

“For good?”

“Start with for now.”

Blaine takes Artemis to the dog run, and they walk back slowly, stopping to get Kurt coffee and a doughnut on their way. When they get home, Kurt’s boots are gone and he is sitting on the sofa, reading. “We got you these,” Blaine says. “To say sorry.”

Kurt looks at Blaine, and then at Artemis, and he sighs deeply and pats the sofa for the dog. “Here,” he says, and she wags her tail and clambers up beside him. He pets her head and she licks his hand, and he says she has to learn to not eat shoes. She huffs on him and that’s that.

*

**October**

Blaine comes home rubbing his shoulder and wincing.

“What’s happened?” Kurt sounds concerned, and Blaine grimaces and drops Artemis’ leash on the counter top.

“We need to take her to puppy training,” Blaine says, and rubs his shoulder, twists it in the socket. Kurt picks Artemis up and turns her to face Blaine, makes a face at him. Blaine snorts a laugh and reaches to rub her ears.

“Don’t,” he says. “I’m serious. We need to get her to walk on a leash. Every time we pass a cat I feel like I’m trying to hold back a sports car with a piece of twine.”

Kurt nods and lowers the dog to the floor, promises they’ll look into it.

(They find a class on a Monday night. It works for both of them, and they take her together. They both agree, as they head home, that they’re very much both the problem. It’s like having a toddler. One of them says no, one of them says yes. They’re creating a monster. Neither of them care, if she’ll walk on a lead past a cat.)

*

**November**

The chewing becomes an issue when she swallows one of Kurt’s cotton reels and it blocks her system. She’s rushed into the vet for emergency surgery, and Blaine worries that they’ve accidentally killed her. (Kurt says it’s not their fault. They didn’t feed her the cotton reel. Blaine knows he’s trying to assuage his own guilt for leaving it where she could get it, but it still hurts to hear.)

Bar nothing, the two days she spends in hospital - Blaine says it’s hospital, and there is no arguing with him - are the tensest of Blaine’s life. They top the build up to their wedding, the time Kurt was in hospital, and the time he was in hospital himself. He could do something about those, but there’s nothing he can do for Artemis except fret that she’ll be okay.

Come home she does, though, her tail as waggy as ever. She bounces around the kitchen, bangs into furniture with her cone, and Blaine could actually cry, he’s so glad she’s okay. Kurt brings home gourmet dog food for her, and she eats it with relish and then looks for more. Kurt scratches her ears and hugs her, and makes sure that all of his sewing supplies are raised entirely out of her reach.

*

**December**

Blaine puts the last present underneath the tree two days before Christmas. Kurt looks at him from the other side of the kitchen counter, and they share a grin that turns into laughter.

“Don’t tell me,” Kurt says. “It’s for the dog.”

Blaine shakes his head. “Actually, that might have been the only one that’s yours?”

Kurt nods and points to two small parcels on the table beside the tree. “Those are yours,” he says. “The rest? I’m not so sure.”

Blaine turns back to gaze at the tree, at the mounds of gifts. Some are for friends, and their friends’ children. Overwhelmingly, though, the gifts they have wrapped do belong to Artemis. He doesn’t honestly care. They’re both well paid, they have no dependants, and the dog is theirs to spoil. And yet-

“Can you imagine if we had kids?” he says over his shoulder. Kurt pauses, lays his knife down, gives the question due consideration.

“Do you want them?” he asks. Blaine pokes a paper covered parcel with his toe, and shrugs. When he was 17 he’d wanted them, as a thing that was now a possibility for him, something he could theoretically have. He doesn’t miss the opportunity not taken, though. He shakes his head.

“Not so much, really.”

And he means it.

*

**January**

Kurt has one firm rule. No dog in their bedroom.

And then her bed makes it into the corner anyway.

The rule changes. So long as she stays in her bed, she can sleep in their room. The bed is unobtrusive, and she is quiet when she’s in it. The most she does it stand up, turn around, and curl up with her tail over her nose again.

At least, that’s how she sleeps until things become intimate between them. The moment she hears their breath change, or feels the crack of tension, there is a small bundle of black and white fur between them instead. Blaine laughs and tips her back off of the bed, and Kurt buries his face in Blaine’s sternum, his frustration a laugh that is hot on Blaine’s skin. In the end, Kurt banishes her into the rest of the apartment to entertain herself.

The crying that starts up outside of their bedroom door is actually almost worse.

*

**February**

Kurt makes a last ditch effort to get her to lie on the floor in the evenings. She’s having none of it. She gets down from his end of the sofa, and jumps up into a chair instead. Blaine says she’s not doing any harm, and Kurt arches his eyebrow at him and tells him it’s his fault anyway, because Blaine lets her curl up with him when he’s watching TV or reading. Blaine doesn’t think it’s worth arguing about, not really.

He does print a photograph from his phone, though, which he pins to the refrigerator door with a small magnet. In it, Kurt is asleep on the sofa, and Artemis is spread across his chest like a blanket, the top of her head nestled just beneath Kurt’s chin.

Kurt doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t remove the picture. There’s no further discussion about where she lies, though, so long as she’s not lying between them on movie date nights in.

*

**March**

The awful thing is, is that she’s learned that she can clamber all over people and she won’t be told not to do it. Both Kurt and Blaine allow her to drape herself all over them, and she treats everyone the same way. When their friends come round, Kurt starts shutting her in the kitchen behind a baby gate, so she can still see and to minimise the whining. Blaine looks at him with his eyes saucer wide, and Kurt holds up a stern warning finger at him.

“Don’t,” he says. Blaine pouts and tilts his head. Kurt can feel himself fighting the laugh that bubbles in his chest. “Blaine, behave!”

Blaine snorts a laugh, and they stare at one another across the back of the sofa.

“Do I get a treat if I do?” Blaine asks, and Kurt shakes his head.

“Only when you’ve learned to balance a cookie on your nose.”

*

**April**

One year. It seems to have flown by, but it’s her birthday almost before they realise that the year is up. Kurt buys her actual salmon as a treat, cooks it with rice for her, and wraps his arm around Blaine’s waist as they watch her eat it. Blaine’s arm holds him in return.

“I’m not sure she appreciates fine dining,” he says, resting his head on Blaine’s shoulder. He can feel Blaine’s smile as he kisses his hair.

“Probably not,” Blaine responds, squeezing him close. “But I appreciate it, so let’s go with that.”

Kurt laughs and picks his head up, kisses Blaine’s jaw. “You’re a dork,” he says. And then, “I love you.”

Blaine frowns and turns his head. “I love you, too,” he replies.

And it’s true.


End file.
